from the taking-my-ball-and-go-home dept

As part of its continued foray into film and more flexible release windows, Netflix this week announced it had acquired the Cary Fukunaga film "Beasts of No Nation." Based on the novel by Uzodinma Iweala, the movie stars Idris Elba and examines the impact of civil war on an unnamed West African country. Like the company's acquired sequel to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," Netflix is using the opportunity to kick down the doors of antiquated release windows, pushing the film to theaters the same day it will be available on Netflix instant streaming.

Given this would challenge the aging structure of the film industry, you'll probably not be surprised to learn that the primary response to Netflix's move has been of the hissy fit variety. That home video viewing will kill theaters has been the refrain of theater owners for decades now.

So, when Netflix announced it would be offering its Crouching Tiger sequel in IMAX on the same day as streaming availability, AMC, Regal and Cinemark -- which, combined, run 247 of the 400 IMAX theaters in North America -- unsurprisingly announced they'd be boycotting the movie this summer. Similarly, those same chains have joined forces to boycott Netflix's release of "Beasts of No Nation," insisting they need to do so to protect the 90-day delay between a theatrical debut and a home entertainment release.

That inflexibility has opened the door to folks like Alamo Drafthouse CEO Tim League, who somehow grasps the immeasurably complicated idea that sometimes people like going out to the movies, and sometimes they like staying home. League shot down the idea that tinkering with release windows was a death knell for theater owners:

"I’m agnostic about this sort of thing,” said Tim League, the company’s CEO and founder. “I look at films I want to play and I play them regardless of the release strategy." League noted that Alamo Drafthouse had success showing “Snowpiercer,” even though that science-fiction adventure debuted last summer on-demand while it was still in theaters.

"I don’t look at myself as a competitor to Netflix,” said League. “I think that argument is a little bit of a red herring. I watch a lot of movies at home, but there comes a time where I want to get out of the house. I look at cinemas as one of those options that compete with restaurants or baseball games or all of those things I can’t do in my living room."

Flexibly focusing on the consumer instead of crossing your arms and making a pouty face when inevitable industry evolution occurs? Ridiculous! Somebody clearly forgot to inform League that change is always bad, and pouting like a petulant child is the only effective and profitable path forward when history and technology threaten to rattle the status quo.

from the punchline:-she-wasn't dept

The MPAA has been pushing its strict take all prisoners approach to force movie theaters into pissing off nearly all movie goers by wildly accusing anyone with a mobile phone of destroying the entire US economy. Or something like that. We've already seen theaters call in Homeland Security when a guy so much as dared to wear his Google Glass during a movie. And now, the latest story of MPAA-driven excess, as revealed by TorrentFreak, involves Cinemark ejecting an elderly woman because she had an old "brick, slider-type" mobile phone, which her husband handed to her as he had to leave. There is also a theory that someone else in the theater saw her theater-provided closed captioning device and assumed that it was a recording device. Either way, the lady (who is not a fluent English speaker, and had trouble understanding the commotion) was ejected from the theater, even though theater employees realized she was not recording the movie.

from the is-this-a-joke? dept

There are times when I wonder just what various entertainment industry execs are thinking (or drinking or smoking, as the case may be). Back in April we laughed at the idea that people would be interested in paying $30 for video on demand for a movie, just because they could get it a little bit before it came out on DVD. The $30 price point was just too high. And, of course, it didn't take long for the news to come out that... $30 was just too high and almost no one bought.

So what do you do if that plan fails? Well, if you're smart, you look at more reasonable price points. If you're not... you raise the price. Yes, that's right. Universal, with the assistance of parent company Comcast, is now going to test the preposterous $60 video on demand offering. The reason for the jacked up price? Because it'll come out on VOD three weeks after being released in the theaters -- at which point the film will still be in the theaters. The test is also going to be done on what the studio hopes is going to be a blockbuster: Tower Heist, starring Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller and Matthew Broderick.

Here's what's wrong with this: the studio is thinking about this from the studio's perspective and not the consumer's perspective (at all). Of course, this is NBC Universal we're talking about, so that's not particularly shocking. In the studio world, release "windows" are everything. And each later release window is less and less of a big deal. So it's totally natural to them to think "gee, if we move up the release window, that's more valuable, so let's jack up the price." But a consumer isn't thinking about release windows. A consumer is thinking "I want to watch a movie. I could go out to the theater, or I could watch it at home." And then they look at the option at home... and if they can, say, watch a film at no additional cost from Netflix... or if they can grab a movie at Redbox for $1... and they compare that to $60 for video on demand, who's actually going to do that? The pricing is insanity.

Even funnier, however, was watching how the theaters totally freaked out over the original $30 plan, as they do with any plan to shrink the precious "window" between the theatrical release and any other kind of release. This is because theater owners don't know what business they're in. They think that they're in the content business, when they're really in the business of selling their seats. The fact that theater owners thought they couldn't compete with an insane $30 rental suggests that they don't know how to provide a good experience.

And, of course, now that there's an even more ridiculous $60 price point, you would think that the theater folks would chuckle and say "hey, we can compete with that, no problem." But it appears theater owners may be even more unable to comprehend the mind of the consumer than the execs at NBC Universal. Thus, Cinemark is already warning that it will boycott the movie if Universal goes forward with this plan.

In the meantime, it's also worth noting that the theaters convinced a bunch of big name Hollywood directors to sign an open letter to the studios protesting these kinds of "early" VOD releases. One of the names on that letter, by the way? Brett Ratner. The director of Tower Heist. Embarrassing... He is, of course, trying to distance himself from this trial, noting that he wasn't informed of it until the day before it was announced and had nothing to do with it. Of course, that's part of what happens when you do a deal like this. The studio owns the project, and they can do whatever they want with it.

Either way, don't expect too many people to pay up for this experiment. It almost makes you wonder if the idea is to make it fail on purpose.

from the can't-take-the-competition? dept

IMAX theaters have become an increasingly important part of the movie business's continuing success over the past few years, as theaters have realized that (1) you can't "pirate" the IMAX experience and (2) people are often willing to pay more for it. But, it appears that at least one theater began to wonder why it had to pay IMAX so much for such an offering, and decided to set out on its own to build a competitor. The only problem is that this theater, Cinemark, has been a customer of IMAX, so now IMAX is suing Cinemark for trade secret violations and breach of contract (sent in by Eric Goldman).

The details of the case certainly look like a business deal gone bad, and also involve Cinemark preemptively going to Texas (of course) to file a patent action against IMAX, asking the court to make clear that it does not infringe on IMAX's patents. There may very well be breach of contract issues involved here, so IMAX may have a decent case on that front. But what's more interesting is the question of whether or not there are trade secret violations here. We don't talk about trade secret protections as much around here, because they really don't come up that often. But IMAX is claiming that it shared proprietary trade secret info with Cinemark as part of their relationship, and that info was used by Cinemark to build its competing service.

Perhaps much more interesting, however, is the fact that, at least according to the IMAX lawsuit, the Cinemark XD quality has been reviewed poorly compared to IMAX (I looked around and actually found the reviews to be mixed, with many saying that the two are comparable in terms of experience). Cinemark is a much bigger company than IMAX, and had direct access to all of their technology -- and, even so, at least some are saying that the end result doesn't measure up. I'm reminded again of how silly it is to claim that big companies can always "steal" good ideas from smaller ones. It's simply not that easy. Beyond just the basic quality issues, IMAX really has built up a great brand name, and many people do think specifically about going to see "IMAX films." Cinemark can chip into that, but it's going to take a lot of marketing effort. And, really, what's wrong with a bit of competition? IMAX has had the market to itself for years, and some competition between two different methods of "immersive" movie-going experiences seems like it should only create a better situation for consumers.